Armorsmith Archive
Thread: n00b A/S made this layer for Comp...critisism invited
DirthNader wrote:
Depends on the usage. My customers are primarily heavy PvP'ers and high-level PvE players. If I made the armor you're describing they'd think I'd gone loco.
RelicOMO wrote:
For triple layered composite kinetic, try getting your layers to 1/1/1 HAM, 2% base, 6% kinetic. Or 7% kinetic, 1.8% base or so. Should get you 80% kinetic comp with low HAM, a far superior armour to heavy kinetic.
A truly elite PvPer or PvEer would, in my experience, eschew heavy kinetic rather than light kinetic. The reason is simple - an elite PvPer in 80 kinetic/70 base, even if that gets sliced to 90 base, is a loser because he has no stun protect. An elite PvEer, of the type who needs the heaviest resist possible, isn't likely to be happy with getting stuck with 80% kinetic either. He wants 90% kinetic, so giving him 80/70 heavy kinetic is still useless. He gets no more protection than an 80/60 kinetic suit, regardless of slice, and gets 250 more HAM for his bargain at least. Even if he gets an enc slice on every piece of his heavy kinetic, he still ends up with more HAM than an unsliced light kinetic suit.
A few AS on our server have tried 80/68-69 heavy kinetic as a sale item. They are almost invariably forced by their customers to make light kinetic, because people understand that heavy kinetic is a waste of HAM and money.This is very similar to another argument that is going on in another thread, over sticking people with 80% caps in important resists like kinetic. And fundamentally, I believe, as do the better players and AS I have found, that giving people 80% resists to important damage types is best used to offset a balanced HAM cost. If you are going to shaft your customers with high HAM costs anyway, then at least give them an armour that they can get 90% to important resists.
RelicOMO wrote:
A truly elite PvPer or PvEer would, in my experience, eschew heavy kinetic rather than light kinetic. The reason is simple - an elite PvPer in 80 kinetic/70 base, even if that gets sliced to 90 base, is a loser because he has no stun protect. An elite PvEer, of the type who needs the heaviest resist possible, isn't likely to be happy with getting stuck with 80% kinetic either. He wants 90% kinetic, so giving him 80/70 heavy kinetic is still useless.
Elite PvP'ers on Shadowfire go for 40% stun effectiveness sliced armor. When I post that I've restocked, the 40% stun suits with base around 85% are the first to go, regardless of price.
Elite PvE'ers on Shadowfire go for with 80% kinetic effectiveness sliced armor. Yes, 80% kinetic isn't ideal, but if you participate in high-level PvE (which I do almost exclusively) you'll learn that very few things in the game have hard-hitting melee attacks. By the time you master an elite melee profession the only things you can't tank very easily are krayts. On the other hand, the NPC's in the Corvette and Death Watch Bunker have some extremely hard hitting ranged attacks, so the 90% (or near 90% energy) is important.
Frankly, I'm not going to make anything other than heavy stun or kinetic layered composite because they're the only thing that reliably sell on my server. No one is going to want encumbrance sliced 80% heat/blast/acid composite, so I'd have to eat the encumbrance slices, much as I already do on stun composite. If I could get away with not making stun layered comp I would, but I enjoy the exposure from the high profile players who wear my armor.
In short, don't try to tell people from other servers what will and won't sell there. I've tried lightweight composite, and so have two other masters. We all ended up discounting the piss out of it to move it off the vendors. Heck, I burned through a ton of Nightsister shards to make lighter 40% stun, 64% base helmets and no one cared. I took them off of the vendor after they sat for almost a month.
On the other hand, I've never had to discount and armor with a base over 80%, regardless of HAM costs or whether it was stun or kinetic layered. I make what my customers want, and on Shadowfire they want three types of high-end composite - effectiveness sliced triple stun, effectiveness sliced triple kinetic, and encumbrance sliced triple kinetic (at a pretty steep discount, mind you).
DirthNader wrote:
In short, don't try to tell people from other servers what will and won't sell there. I've tried lightweight composite, and so have two other masters. We all ended up discounting the piss out of it to move it off the vendors. Heck, I burned through a ton of Nightsister shards to make lighter 40% stun, 64% base helmets and no one cared. I took them off of the vendor after they sat for almost a month.
But of course. You can only make what sells. I am fortunate in that the general armour wearing populace on Valcyn has been quite well educated as to how best to maximise their armour. I get in over 200 Nightsister layers and shards every week, and every single piece of NS armour goes withintwo daysof me putting it up. Light kinetic composite is the grind armour of choice, and the 80% kinetic ubese I put out was all gone within hours. I can't take the credit for educating the Valcyn populace - that belongs rightfully to those masters who came before me.
And yes, of course, 80% kinetic is more than adequate for 99% of the creatures in the game in PvE. Otherwise we wouldn't bother making 80 kinetic at all. But, as you clearly know, there are those things that need more than 80 kinetic if you are going to solo them. And given my limited time, particularly with all the armoursmithing, I usually find that I must do the high end PvE solo, or with one other person at best. And when that happens, I don't want my armour limited to 80% kinetic - when I solo krayts, Dark Jedi Masters, Akxva Min and the like, I am grateful for every % over 80 kinetic I can get.
RelicOMO wrote:
But of course. You can only make what sells. I am fortunate in that the general armour wearing populace on Valcyn has been quite well educated as to how best to maximise their armour.
Don't ever take that for granted. I and the armorsmiths I talk to often bemoan the lack of "refinement" in our server's armor tastes. It was so much more entertaining as a crafter to balance the effectiveness and weight of the armor than it is max one line and dump everything else in another.
DirthNader wrote:
RelicOMO wrote:
But of course. You can only make what sells. I am fortunate in that the general armour wearing populace on Valcyn has been quite well educated as to how best to maximise their armour.
Don't ever take that for granted. I and the armorsmiths I talk to often bemoan the lack of "refinement" in our server's armor tastes. It was so much more entertaining as a crafter to balance the effectiveness and weight of the armor than it is max one line and dump everything else in another.
I do think that Valcyn's armor buyers are very well educated and I appreciate that. I make 5 different types of composite and will soon be adding a 6th.....and the all sell well. I do think the high base kinetic isn't the best, but I keep making it because people keep buying it. I also thought that the low HAM 80% kinetic wasnt too usefull (I would use ubese instead), but I started making it because I was losing sales the the 3-4 other 12 point smith making it.
also I think the best PVE armor anyone can buy is high base with no energy or kinetic in special resists. I had been making high base acid layered, butno one bought it. I am happy to see that trend is reversing on valcyn and I will be rolling out some heat layered stuff later in the week.
as for your encumberence sliced stun armor not selling, just sell it unsliced and let them bother with slicing, that way, if they don't get the slice they want, they buy 3-4 peices untill they get the desired slice.
DirthNader wrote:
Don't ever take that for granted. I and the armorsmiths I talk to often bemoan the lack of "refinement" in our server's armor tastes. It was so much more entertaining as a crafter to balance the effectiveness and weight of the armor than it is max one line and dump everything else in another.
RelicOMO wrote:
So educate them. You clearly understand, as a crafter, what is both challenging to make and more effective, ie. balanced armour. You clearly enjoy a high profile on your server, and probably reach a good number of the customer base with advertising and so on. You clearly have the ability and the knowledge to make exceptional armour - if someone like you, who knows hundreds of times more about armour than the average player, won't educate the consumers, where will they ever learn?
I would, but I'm afraid that my time as an armorsmith is approaching its twilight.
Someone above suggested I sell unsliced armor - well, the cat got out of the bag on that one a long time ago and now Shadowfire pretty much demands pre-sliced armor. As much as I love the profession and despite maintaining a good relationship with my bulk slicer, to maintain statusat the top ofShadowfire's gamerequires a lot of work outside of armorsmithing - even with a relatively simple formulafor pricing pre-sliced armor I still spend two hours restocking vendors after a large run.
I'm afraid that "educating" the public on my server is going to have to fall to one of the fresher faces. But I digress...
justapilgrim wrote:
-the original poster never said what "type' of composite he was shooting for, or desired stats
I did post, about 3 messages up, to assume I was trying to get 'decent' Kinetic comp. Sorry if I was unclear.
<edit>
I reread the whole thread...I made mention of it twice.
Message Edited by Lecivius on 06-25-2004 11:56 AM